


Evening Moment

by StripySock



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: A little bit of maths, Backstory, F/F, Femslash, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-26
Updated: 2013-10-26
Packaged: 2017-12-30 13:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1019431
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StripySock/pseuds/StripySock
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Favourite adores the money she saves, the maths she holds up as a shield against the world and - rather reluctantly - Dahlia.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Evening Moment

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Carmarthen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Carmarthen/gifts).



> Thanks for running the fest! I hope you enjoy.

"Don't touch those," Favourite raps out when she sees  Zéphine's fingers venturing just a little too close to the small case of leather-bound books that protrudes from under the bed. The other woman whips her fingers back with a pout on her pretty lips.

 

"You're so cruel,  Favourite," she says and moves away with a disdainful air as though she'd never wanted to touch them at all. Favourite ignores her in favour of turning a page. This is why she prefers the company of Dahlia, who is less prone to eating sweetmeats and then using the same sticky hands to flick through a book she cannot read. True, she is often engaged to her mirror, making love to her reflection; but then, as Favourite idly concedes (for they are not in competition at the moment, each engaged with their respective lovers), it is a very pretty face and one that rewards looking at.

 

She does not hold a candle to Favourite, or even, as Favourite must concede, to Fantine, but she comes close, and as though in reassurance Favourite can't resist a glance in the mirror and a quick low smile at herself. The dress she wears today is flattering, and she rustles at the neckline a little bit and imagines Blachevelle's face when he sees her, before she dismisses the thought and stands, pours them each a little glass of wine and breaks the white bread she bought yesterday.

 

Money, she thinks with the cold hard logic of one who has been without and who intends never to be so again, is needed. The bread is from yesterday, the wine is of a poorer vintage and Gaston grows cooler now. Favourite does not wish to discard him early but she knows the signs on his face - there is a sweet young girl back at home and a betrothal in the wings, and however much he may delude himself with the pleasures of being a bohemian, well, she knows his kind, more interested in food than music, wine than books. He will grow stout and old and coarse, and self-congratulatory in his old age with the year he spent away from home, will raise his brows and delicately refuse to tell those stories before the ladies, and then he will regale his equally piglike acquaintances with them. She cordially despises him but she will have her deserts. Perhaps she shall take Dahlia for dinner.

 

Then  Zéphine drops down over her shoulder, fresh and wholesome, and far too fond of other people's business for her own good, stares at the page as though she wants to make out of the words, before she looks puzzled. "They're numbers," she says and her brow wrinkles as though in deep thought. "Why on earth are you reading them?"

 

Once Favourite's father had asked her the same thing, when before she had been obliged to make her own way in the world she had touched the books with which he went out to teach. She never has an answer that she can put into words, only that she feels that if she understood those books that she would understand the world, that everything would become clear as a stoup of holy water. She hid behind doors before she knew why, listened to his harshness, to the sound of his hand meeting the flesh of whatever unfortunate boy had been brought there for lessons instead of her father travelling to their house. She can still hear him if she closes her eyes and thinks about it -' _sine_ , boy, _sine_ , are you an idiot?'

 

For many reasons she never does close her eyes and think about it. Not when all he ever gave her was the ability to read, five heavy coins and a box of books that he no longer considered fit for purpose. She spent the money on gowns and walked into the arms of her first man. The books stayed under the bed, to be pondered at her leisure. She curtsies to her father on the street sometimes, he makes the elegant bow that had secured him more jobs than his faltering attempts at mathematics ever had, and they pass by each other.

 

There is not a woman in Paris who knows her numbers better than Favourite. Woe betide the haberdasherer who thinks to cheat her on the price per yard of ribbon, or the fiacre driver who charges in time, swift and crisp she cuts them off and twists their own numbers back upon them. Numbers are smooth and clean and set, they do not fumble at your knees or leer with intent, they surface clear and cold and formed, and sometimes before she sleeps Favourite weighs up herself and all she is and all she owns and sets it on the scale, mapped out and determined. She sleeps easy on those nights.

 

She has been lost in her thoughts too long, and she tilts back her head to smile at  Zéphine, a cool sweet smile that she knows doesn't reach her eyes. "Because I wish to," and really why has she invited  Zéphine here at all? True, she is usually a little more diverting than this, those ears hear more than most of every little scandal and her tongue is eager to share it - who has been careless and reaped the fruits of it, the love affairs, the separations, all the sordid pieces of life in town. "But tell me, what of Marie and Arnaud," she asks and resigns herself to setting aside the calculations of Mersenne for the moment and plunging herself back into the fray.

 

Later when  Zéphine has left, her mother ascends the stairs and creases her face in an unforgiving scowl at her daughter. Favourite has long given up attempting to placate her, she ignores her as she powders her face a little more, and her mother departs, heavy footsteps creaking the stairs as she goes to find the porter and complain once more about the daughter who houses her, to impute that the stain of illegitimacy has threaded itself through Favourite and corrupted her, as though age preserves her from the guilt of being the cause of such a stain. She believes her black clothes protect her, her crucifix wards off those accusations as though they were part of some other life, and Favourite sees an example not to be followed there before her. She will not age, cowering and dependent and purposefully ignorant of her past, and she thinks with satisfaction of her savings, the slowly gathering interest, the securement of her future.

 

Then Dahlia's light feet run up the stairs and Favourite, though she scolds herself for feeling a lightness of heart, cannot resist it. Dahlia spends money like water, thinks not of the future, can barely count to ten on her fingers but she's cleverer than  Zéphine and twice as witty, and sometimes Favourite thinks that if she could bear to be fond of anyone, she'd be a little too fond of Dahlia. For this reason she is twice as cruel at times as she is to anyone else, and taunts her with imagined fondnesses for actors and artists, though it loses half its fun when Dahlia sighs and looks pensive, not enraged, an expression made for driving one to distraction.

 

Favourite has taught Dahlia what she knows, how to keep a man for as long as the natural span of that time will be, has tried to share with her what she knows of numbers and the way the world is put together, and in return Dahlia shares with her tender caresses, shy roguish glances across the table when Listolier looks away, a coquetry in her nature which Favourite cannot help finding pleasing much though she takes herself to task for it.

 

It is hard to protest,however, and to engage one's good sense when Dahlia alights like a feather on your knee, and twines arms around your neck and swears that she meant to bring you a petit four only she forgot, and makes amends with a kiss almost as innocent as though Favourite had never taken her to task, as though no man had ever seduced her - not a Fantine, oblivious, but a Dahlia, ingenuous.

 

Favourite twines her fingers around Dahlia's wrist, measures those inches, counts them silently, the length of her arm, the circumference of her white neck, the uneven prettiness of her unequal figure, quantifies her and categorises her as thoroughly as though she is three yards of cloth on the draper's bench and tries not to ponder on those things which numbers will not elucidate, there's no prime number that will describe how Dahlia's eyelids close, or the dark sweep of her eyelashes on her cheek. Fermat himself could not deduct the probability of the unpredictable shift Dahlia makes on Favourite’s knee, or the chances that this would make something in Favourite that's been hollow so long, leap in recognition. Still she hides it away, buries it deep inside herself, lets her kisses be glancing and her caresses hollow, a protection she cannot yield. The money in the bank and the dull predictable men are safer, they are her logic where this could drag her into madness.

 

When Dahlia unhooks her earrings, though, tosses them aside despite the fact that they’re diamonds from a Listolier still enamoured, Favourite realises it is not just herself she must fight - Dahlia has plans too.


End file.
